{"id":3434,"date":"2009-10-27T20:50:02","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T20:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jurnsearch.wordpress.com\/?p=3434"},"modified":"2009-10-27T20:50:02","modified_gmt":"2009-10-27T20:50:02","slug":"the-lack-of-search-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/2009\/10\/27\/the-lack-of-search-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The lack of search literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Intute reports on some new UK research on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.intute.ac.uk\/blog\/2009\/10\/27\/students-and-the-mobile-internet\/\">mobile internet use among students<\/a>.  Tangentially, the report confirms what I&#8217;ve <a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/2009\/07\/24\/practical-lessons-in-search-literacy\/\">commented on<\/a> here several times&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230; it was clear from across the focus groups and depth interviews that students [ <em>second year undergraduate students from a range of disciplines and universities<\/em> ] received low quality training on using the Internet for academic research, with most guidance limited to using on-line university library resources and a broad introduction on how to use search engines.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I suppose the question is&#8230; why?  In the face of an unprecedented and growing level of open access to knowledge, why do so many of the Web generation (*) manage to reach the second year of a degree course without <em>anyone<\/em> actually teaching them to search properly and fully?  Don&#8217;t blame <em>information overload<\/em> for the reason why people can&#8217;t find quality stuff.  Blame search illiteracy.<\/p>\n<p>It also seems odd that the world appears to be filled with Twitter and Facebook workshops, yet professional-level workshops in advanced search are as rare as a dodo. Personally, I try to give all my undergraduate classes a short live &#8216;Web Search Masterclass&#8217; early in the semester.  No-one ever complains &#8220;&#8230;but we did this with the librarian \/ sixth form \/ school&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;* the average second-year student would have been aged 5 or 6 when Netscape 2.0 appeared, alongside cheap \u00a310-a-month net access and cheap modems. When they entered their secondary school Google was hitting one billion URLs indexed.  When they left school at 16, their parents were swopping dial-up internet access for broadband.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Intute reports on some new UK research on mobile internet use among students. Tangentially, the report confirms what I&#8217;ve commented &hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/2009\/10\/27\/the-lack-of-search-literacy\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10,13,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-search","category-my-general-observations","category-official-and-think-tank-reports","category-spotted-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}